“Somehow, I don’t think this was what the magus had in mind when he told us to find other work,” Twilight remarked, as she watched Applejack unlock the entrance to the city’s sewers.
“Is that going to be a problem, darling?” Rarity asked.
“I don’t think so,” Twilight replied. “If your theory is correct, we shouldn’t run into anything that isn’t already undead, and there’s certainly no point trying to keep secrets from them.”
“Glad you approve,” Rainbow Dash snapped. “Wouldn’t want you to have to kill us.”
Twilight laughed. “I’m sure he was just trying to impress you with the seriousness of this matter. I doubt he wanted me to literally kill you along with any witnesses. That would be crazy.”
“That’s the order he gave, though,” Applejack said. “If it comes down to it, you’ll have no choice.”
“I don’t think it works that way,” Twilight replied. “It’s more of a charm effect, dispelling any doubts I have about the Empire’s methods and leadership, so that I want to make the Emperor and his agents proud. If he was right there and ordered me to kill you, then maybe…”
“He was right there,” Rainbow Dash said. “He ordered you to kill us.”
“Yes…” Twilight said, shifting from hoof to hoof, prancing in place. “But I don’t think he really meant it. I guess we’ll see?”
Everyone was quiet.
“Or… maybe none of you will cross the line,” Twilight said. “Oh, who am I kidding, Rainbow Dash is bound to mess up sooner or later. Really, I should just tear out her tongue now and save us the trouble.” She giggled to herself, then glanced nervously at the other fey, who’d all stopped what they were doing to watch her.
“Maybe you shouldn’t joke about that sort of thing,” Pinkie Pie said.
Eventually, Applejack managed to open the grating covering the sewer entrance, and the party descended a slick mossy staircase into the foul-smelling tunnels beneath the city. There were signs that these tunnels had been inhabited recently – dead campfires of scavenged wood, bundles of cloth and worthless possessions that the homeless might cling to. There were other signs that this was no longer the case – bloody smears along the walls, and the occasional pile of chewed viscera.
Soon enough, they came upon proof that Rarity’s prediction had been correct, in the form of a pack of bloodstained ghouls. “Fresh meat!” one of them hissed, as they turned towards the party.
“I knew I was right,” Rarity said happily. “Where else would one dispose of a city’s worth of corpses? Now, let me do the talking,” Rarity added, as the others drew their weapons and prepared for a fight.
“Ah don’t think they have much interest in talkin’,” Applejack said, as the undead scuttled closer.
Rarity laughed, and stepped forwards. “Don’t be such a worrywart.” She turned to the slavering ghouls. “Fellow undead, I’ve come to you with an offer that I think you’ll find to your liking.”
One of the ghouls – a former earth pony – likewise stepped forwards, sniffing the air. “You bring us fresh meat?”
“Well… no,” Rarity said. “Not right at this moment. But if –“
“I smell meat. We take meat!” The other ghouls hissed and jeered at his words, jumping up and down in place.
Rarity rolled her eyes, and pulsed with dark power. It washed over the ghouls, and two of them – including the leader – calmed down, enfolded in her necromantic power. “Kill the other ghouls in your pack, then kill yourselves,” she ordered them.
“Yes, mistress,” the captured ghouls hissed.
“The rest of you can help,” Rarity added, to the party, as the pack of ghouls descended into a frenzied melee. “I have no need for such lowly creatures.”
It was a short fight. Pinkie Pie tossed a fire-bomb onto the whole pack, while the others with ranged attacks flung them at the uncontrolled ghouls. Mostly the ghouls ripped each other apart, however, not having any sort of resistance to each other’s claws. Twilight trotted up and executed the last straggler with her hammer.
“So what are you looking for?” Twilight asked Rarity. “I imagine we’ll primarily find zombies and skeletons – the magus implied that most of those who arose were mindless.”
“There is a city’s worth of undead infesting these sewers,” Rarity insisted. “I’m not certain what I’m looking for, but I’m sure that I can do better than… that,” she shuddered as she stepped through the scorched pile of mutilated flesh and severed limbs, reaching down to grab a decayed foreleg in her teeth, to chew on as a snack.
The others followed, Twilight and Macintosh gingerly making their way around the remains, trying not to step in any body.
The party did indeed find a vast horde of zombies and skeletons, which were surprisingly passive, at least in the light of day, as well as another pack of ghouls who were smarter than the first, and ran off immediately when Rarity offered them the opportunity to do so. The most powerful undead they were able to find in the high tunnels – the sewers proper, where sunlight filtered down from gratings and outhouses, and the whole atmosphere was foul but not particularly dark – was a large zombified crocodile.
“Closer,” Rarity admitted, as Macintosh grappled with the creature, “But still not what I’m looking for. Dispatch it, Twilight.”
“As you wish, madam,” Twilight replied cheerfully, and proceeded to beat it to death, or rather until it stopped moving.
It seemed that if they were to locate more powerful undead – undead of a darker nature, perhaps, who feared and hated the sunlight – they would have to go deeper. And as luck would have it, not far from the pool where they’d fought the crocodile was a large open shaft, a narrow staircase spiraling down into the darkness, with filthy water dribbling over the edge in a series of short waterfalls, leaving the stairs moldy and slick.
Applejack looked down into the darkness. “Nope,” she said.
“Don’t worry, you’ll be safe with me,” Rarity assured her.
“I know you need a new undead minion and all, but this seems like a really bad idea,” Rainbow Dash said. “I’m with AJ on this one.”
“I… don’t think we should go down there,” Fluttershy said. “Maybe if we shout down the hole, we can get some friendly undead to come up?”
“Pinkie Pie, surely you at least are with me in this matter,” Rarity asked.
The pink pegasus rubbed her hooves together nervously. “Okay, Rarity, if you’re really really really really sure that we won’t all get horribly murdered by shadows and wraiths and vampires… none of which we’re really equipped to fight…”
“Actually,” Twilight said, “we were all given magic weapons when we turned in the voucher we got from the mage tower, so technically we are equipped to fight shadows and wraiths.”
“Not me,” Rainbow Dash said. “I got a belt.”
“Monks’ attacks are magical without the need for a weapon,” Twilight said, rolling her eyes.
“Technically… I’m not a monk. I’m a ‘martial artist’,” Rainbow Dash said, making quotation marks with her wings. “So I’m trained to spot the weak points in anypony’s defenses, but I don’t have the magic touch that would let me punch a ghost. I’ll need actual magic for that.”
“Rainbow…” Twilight said, rubbing her forehead with a hoof.
“But you’re in, aren’t you darling?” Rarity said, leaning close to Twilight and smiling, showing her fangs.
“I guess I do owe you one,” Twilight replied. She turned to the others. “The rest of you, guard the rear. There’s a significant chance that we’ll need a clear escape route. On that note, Rarity – make sure to clean the stairs as we go. I don’t want anypony slipping and falling on all that moss.”
“Whatever you say, dear,” Rarity said, as she happily pranced down the stairs, Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle following with quite a bit less spring in their step.
Cleaning the slime off the slippery parts of the stairs made for slow going, but with no railing to catch hold of if one was to slip and fall – and no sign of a bottom to the shaft down which they were circling – it was probably a wise precaution. After making a full circuit of the shaft, and descending about fifty feet, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Twilight Sparkle at last came to an opening – a wide ledge set back into the wall, which at one point had apparently been used as some sort of subterranean marketplace for trinkets and low-quality food. It had apparently been abandoned in a hurry, although the shoddy quality of the goods made it unlikely that the abandoned stalls held anything of value. A half dozen bodies littered the ground, most of them ponies, although one was a human of all things.
A closer examination revealed that while the bodies bore physical wounds, as if from vicious claws, the true cause of death was darker – none of the bodies cast a shadow.
“Eeee!” Rarity squealed happily. “I was hoping for shadows! They’d be perfect, don’t you think? Difficult to kill, but weak enough that I should be able to control several, and they’ll breed more shadows without any effort on my part.”
“And you’ll control the extra shadows too?” Twilight asked, uncertainly.
“I’ll control the original shadows, and they’ll control their spawn for me,” Rarity replied. “Without this sort of hierarchy how is one to ever control an entire army of undead?”
“Maybe one isn’t,” Twilight grumbled under her breath. “So, where are these shadows?”
“Who can say? They’re masters of stealth,” Rarity replied. “Now, stand still. The best way to lure shadows out of hiding is with a living victim to act as bait, but I’d prefer that the two of you survive this endeavor.”
With that, Rarity circled around her friends and cast a pair of spells on each – a shimmering barrier of force, clinging tightly to their hide, and a traditional mystical ward that briefly surrounded them with a blue glow, before fading. “Mage Armor, and Protection from Evil,” she explained. “The latter will only last a few minutes, so it’s best that we hurry. Come along now! And keep your weapons holstered, we’re trying to look like easy prey.”
Twilight lit the tip of her horn so that she and Pinkie Pie could see, and (after Pinkie Pie mutated herself, since that made her a little better at dodging) they began to search the shadowy marketplace.
If there were still shadows lurking in the marketplace, they didn’t take the bait. Perhaps they’d heard Rarity’s speech. After poking fruitlessly at the stalls and failing to find anything of value – even the dead bodies had already been picked over – they picked a side tunnel and headed into the deeper darkness.
The design of the tunnel on this level implied that once it had been a conduit for sewage, much like the level above, but it had long since gone bone dry. Nothing moved, other than the ponies – not even insects, not even the air. The only sound was the clip-clop of their hooves.
And then, the quiet scratch of claws on stone came from the darkness ahead, scrabbling along the walls and ceiling, but peering into the darkness revealed nothing – except to Rarity, whose undead eyes saw through the darkness as if it was day, and saw a pair of tattered vaporous figures flanking a terrible clawed humanoid with a face hidden by a white mask.
“A moon wraith!” Rarity said with glee, even as the other two wraiths of the more ordinary variety swooped into view of the others. “So very rare, I must have it!”
“Wraiths?” Pinkie Pie squeaked, fumbling her bomb and shattering it against the wall of the corridor, brightening the area briefly with a flare of flame. The moon wraith flickered on the edge of the firelight, as it returned to incorporeality.
Twilight stepped forwards and swung her hammer at the two wraiths who’d approached, and it passed through both of them, tearing off bits of their substance and disrupting them briefly, but not even coming close to dispersing them. “I don’t think we can handle this many!” she cried. “Get your wraith and let’s get out of here!”
The wraiths split up, one attacking each of the living ponies, but for the moment Rarity’s wards held back their touch. Rarity didn’t even look back to see whether they had worked, however. Oblivious to her friends’ fortunes, she stepped forwards into the darkness, and cast a spell. “Come with me, creature of darkness. You have a far more glorious destiny than to simply lurk down here in the sewers.”
The creature exhaled, the wind from its breath like the chill of a winter’s night. “I cannot resist your call, necromancer. But soon, it will be you and your friends who serve my will. All shall fall to darkness.”
“Can we run away now?” Pinkie Pie squealed.
“Yes, yes, if you must,” Rarity said, distracted. “Try to lead the others off while I finish binding this one.”
She didn’t have to tell them twice. The two went barreling down the hallway at top speed, with the wraiths in pursuit, slashing at their heels as they desperately ran for the trickle of sunlight in the upper levels. The wraiths were faster than the ponies, however, and the protection Rarity had given them was not enough to turn every blow. By the time Twilight ran gasping to the top of the stairs – not stopping to explain as she shoved past the rest of the party and headed for the nearest exit to the true sunlight of the surface – both she and Pinkie bore the scars of the wraiths’ chill claws tearing away and devouring pieces of their souls.
But they did get away. The wraiths didn’t even follow them all the way to the upper level, and Rainbow Dash and Applejack were still wondering whether to follow Fluttershy, who’d hurried after the two terrified ponies in case they needed healing, or to stay and wait for Rarity, when the zebra herself came prancing happily up the stairs, a misty figure in her wake boiling away to nothingness as the sparse rays of sunlight touched it.
“So, did they live?” she asked.
“I reckon they did,” Applejack said. “They were both still moving around, at any rate. Running like the Nightmare herself was on their tail, though.”
Rarity nodded, with a smirk. “Then I think I can declare this expedition a complete success! Behold, my new Moon Wraith!”
Rainbow Dash and Applejack stared at the empty air. “Um…” Rainbow Dash said. “I think it burned up in the sunlight. Does that mean we have to start over?”
Rarity cackled. “It’s not ‘burned up’, it’s completely ethereal! Isn’t it wonderful? During the day, it can be the perfect scout, and at night, a terrifying force of doom for our enemies!”
Rainbow Dash tilted her head a bit. “I think the ‘perfect scout’ would be able to talk.”
“Indeed,” Rarity said, motioning for them to follow her as she headed for the surface. “We’ll need to construct some sort of dark box or something that it can hide in when it wants to talk. I hear that Moon Wraiths are wonderful conversationalists. At the moment, it’s held unwillingly in my thrall, but I just know that eventually we’ll become the best of friends!”